🐂 SNOW — Company Profile (Educational)¶
Educational site, not investment advice. Market cap / stock price / quarterly numbers change quickly, so we don't write them. Use SEC + Yahoo Finance links below to check current data.
📌 Basic Info¶
| Field | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Primary business | Cloud data platform (Data Cloud) — cross-hyperscaler unified data warehouse + Cortex AI/ML + Snowflake Marketplace data exchange | 10-K FY26 |
| Founded / HQ | 2012 / Bozeman, Montana (registered HQ; engineering primarily in San Mateo, CA) | wiki |
| CEO | Sridhar Ramaswamy (joined 2024/02, former Neeva co-founder/CEO + Google ex-SVP, Ads & Commerce; AdSense was launched by Google in 2003, not personally co-founded by him) | DEF 14A 2026 |
| Primary listing | NYSE: SNOW (IPO 2020/09) | — |
| Fiscal year | Ends late January (FY26 = 2025/02 - 2026/01) | SEC EDGAR |
💡 Real-time market cap / share price / RPO / Cortex AI adoption: see SEC primary + IR links below
🏭 Industry Chain Coordinates (Part 1-C6 framework)¶
Upstream (Who SNOW depends on)¶
| Supplier | What flows | Key dependency |
|---|---|---|
AMZN (AWS) |
Primary IaaS (historically #1 cloud) | core dependency — SNOW directly pays AWS for compute + storage |
MSFT (Azure) / GOOGL (GCP) |
Secondary IaaS (multi-cloud strategy) | multi-source |
OpenAI / Anthropic / MSFT Azure OpenAI |
LLM models (Cortex AI backend + Snowpark) | API integration |
Downstream (Who depends on SNOW)¶
| Customer | What flows | Concentration |
|---|---|---|
| Fortune 500 + global enterprises (across industries) | Cross-hyperscaler data warehouse + analytics + ML | long-tail diversification; top 10 customer share is limited |
| Data companies (Snowflake Marketplace) | Dataset SKU sales / exchange | ecosystem network |
| Financial institutions (extensive zero-copy data sharing) | Risk + customer analytics | high-margin vertical |
| Manufacturing + retail | ML + analytics workflow | growth engines |
Competitors¶
- Data warehouse / Lakehouse (direct): Databricks (private; valuation moving fast, ~$134B per CNBC 2025/12/16 Series L $4B, up 34% from 2025/08 $100B; 2026/02 $5B round closed at $134B) ·
MSFTFabric (newly integrated) ·AMZNRedshift ·GOOGLBigQuery ·ORCLAutonomous DB - Cross-hyperscaler substitution: Customers using hyperscaler-native lakehouses (Microsoft Fabric is the biggest threat)
- AI/ML platforms: Databricks ·
AMZNSageMaker ·GOOGLVertex AI ·NVDARAPIDS
💼 Business Model + Value Capture (Part 1-C7 lens)¶
- Revenue mix: Nearly 100% Product (Consumption-based, not seat-based)
- Gross margin: GAAP ~65%; non-GAAP product GM ~75-80%; net revenue retention (NRR) historically 130%+ (Cortex AI is the new lever)
- Pricing power: Consumption-based (similar to hyperscaler model); pay-as-you-use — strong but tied to customer usage
- Replacement difficulty: Medium — cross-hyperscaler is SNOW's differentiator, but MSFT Fabric / Databricks are catching up
(For RPO / NRR / Cortex penetration, see latest SEC 10-Q)
🏰 Moat Assessment (Part 3-C2 Buffett 5-step lens)¶
| Type | Strength (0-1) | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Brand | 0.6 | High recognition among data analysts; consumer-level zero |
| Switching cost | 0.6 | Data migration + rewiring workloads + customer multi-year expansion; but hyperscaler-native competitors are catching up |
| Network effect | 0.5 | Snowflake Marketplace + cross-enterprise zero-copy data sharing is a new platform effect |
| Scale + cost | 0.5 | Cross-hyperscaler footprint + R&D amortization |
Total: 2.2 / 4 → medium-strong moat (cross-hyperscaler + zero-copy sharing are unique; Databricks + Fabric are long-term threats)
⚠️ Key Invalidation Triggers (Part 3-C5 anti-thesis lens)¶
Monitor; if triggered, re-evaluate thesis:
- Trigger 1 (quarterly): Product revenue YoY growth < 25% (historical 30-40%+)
- Trigger 2 (quarterly): NRR < 120% (historical 130%+; customer expansion slowing)
- Trigger 3 (medium probability):
MSFTFabric deeply locks in major customers → SNOW loses Azure customer share - Trigger 4 (event): Databricks IPO or major customer publicly switches to Databricks lakehouse
- Trigger 5 (medium probability): Customer cost optimization → SNOW consumption growth slows (compute optimization pressure)
🔗 Cross-Chapter Teaching Links¶
- Part 1-C7 · Value Capture — Consumption-based pricing vs SaaS subscription
- Part 1-C8 · AI Applications — Cortex AI monetization path at data layer
- Patterns — #6 SaaS subscription · #14 enterprise lock-in · #16 platform aggregation
📚 SEC Primary Public Filings (DYOR)¶
- Latest 10-Q (quarterly) — RPO + NRR + Cortex progress
- Latest 10-K (FY26 annual) — full annual + customer concentration + AI risks
- Latest 8-K — material events
- Latest DEF 14A (proxy) — Ramaswamy compensation + governance
- Investor Relations — earnings calendar + Snowflake Summit Investor Day
Live quote: Yahoo Finance SNOW
Educational · Numbers change, the method does not · Make investment decisions based on your own research + risk tolerance